Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the treadOf the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.

Edward Thomas, Roads

Monday, July 16, 2018

Fateful Alliance: The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894

The first chancellor of Imperial Germany, Otto von Bismarck, forged the “Triple Alliance” with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882, and he also maintained cordial relations and a nonaggression pact with tsarist Russia. Bismarck was dismissed in 1890 by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II, however, and his successors refused to renew the nonaggression pact with Russia on the grounds that it was logically inconsistent with Germany’s commitments to Austria-Hungary. The Russian foreign ministry sought to preserve friendly relations with Germany, but the Russian military insisted that a new alliance with France was essential for Russian national security. The tsar’s top military aide, General Nikolai Obruchev, took it upon himself to open direct talks between the French and Russian general staffs after a chance encounter with his French colleague, General Raoul de Boisdeffre, while vacationing on the Riviera. Despite reservations among the professional diplomats of both Russia and France, the generals persuaded Tsar Nicholas II and the French cabinet to endorse their secret military convention, which was signed by the chiefs of the army general staffs in August 1892 and ratified in January 1894 through an exchange of notes between the Russian and French foreign ministers. That agreement is reproduced below, along with excerpts from a memorandum for the Russian ministers of war and foreign affairs in which Obruchev explains the assumptions that guided him during his negotiations with Boisdeffre.

SOURCE: George Kennan, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War.

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Roads to the Great War is part of the Worldwar1.com (link) family of websites and periodicals. It is produced by an editorial team, growing for over a decade, that includes: Michael Hanlon, Kimball Worcester, David Beer, Tony Langley, Donna Wagner, and Diane Rooney. We will also be inviting other WWI historians, enthusiasts, and collectors to contribute to Roads.